Inspired by a comment on my recent post about the myth of User Generated Content, I figured colleague and fellow digital person David Cushman deserved a fuller response than my reply…And hopefully this might inspire more people to get involved.
David has talked at length on his blog, Faster Future, about his concept of people becoming ‘Famous for 15 people‘, rather than ‘Famous for 15 minutes’. And in some ways, it makes a lot of sense.
After all, if you can reach the people most obsessive about a particular interest, whether you call them early adopters or obsessives, then you’re going to accurately target those most likely to engage and respond.

But this does miss some of the reasons for UGC creation, and some of the reason why certain UGC sites maintain an advantage. it’s also why I believe that there should be a bridge between ‘old’ media and new, rather than discarding the old.

To start with, I’d split UGC into two types. The first is that which comes from small groups of friends chatting, for instance on a forum, with high levels of interaction.
This is the type of UGC which most directly works with the ’15 people’ model, as posts to these key people will have a big effect.

But there is another type of UGC creation, which I’d call ‘formal’ or ‘broadcast’ UGC. This ranges from blogs to live webcam shows, and includes user radio shows, user videos etc. Many of these are not simply created in a desire to interact with users who share an interest, but are an attempt to gain fame and respect from the largest possible audience. It’s the only equivalent of appearing on Big Brother, or sending a story into a newspaper, and is part of human nature for those reared on the cult of celebrity. Those people will actively pick Youtube over a niche site, in order to get the widest possible audience for their video/photo/blog. While they’d be happy with interaction from a small number of people, they’d be happier still with a huge number of people. In the same way, I value the small and growing number of blog readers I have, but I’d be happier if they were part of an audience far larger, if only to gain leverage for getting stories.

There is also another aspect which i think the ’15 people’ concept appears to overlook, and I’ll hope Dave will forgive me if I’ve missed the explanation somewhere.

If I’m looking for content on a subject on which I have no previous interaction, I have a number of ways to find it.

A search will bring up those sites who have the best search ranking, or have paid, and I’m unlikely to go through more than a few pages of results.

I’ll post on a site I already use, and hope that another forum member shares my interest, and can recommend something. But I have no way to guage their knowledge of that particular subject.

I might spot a mention or link to a niche site recommended somewhere else, and go and visit. But even with a passionate niche site, I have no way to verify the information I’m given. Or I can choose a ‘traditional’ site, and hope that their professional journalists have integrity.

Those sites with huge audience figures and a mix of both professional and user news, reviews and opinions will win out, because they will have the highest ranking, the most familiar name, and the biggest implied trust on the first visit. And it’s perfectly possible for them to allow their audience to self-niche into smaller groups of interest.

It might seems paradoxical that a web 2.0 fan is debating such a web 2.0 concept, and coming out on the side of the internet and print monoliths, but I think it’s important to keep stating that there is a middle ground being ‘old’ and ‘new’ media which offers the best of both worlds, without any detriment to the user. Social news sites provide good examples of how a site with little or no editorial judgement can skew the news, with Digg, and Fark offering some strange views on the world on any given day.
For instance, Fark today has a ranking of 37 for a story from the Telegraph regarding Tony Blair’s last day in office, and the same ranking for a story about a man who wanted to see his dead girlfriend topless!

A UGC advocate could argue that it demonstrates both stories have equal appeal for readers, and to some extent that’s true. But if you were simply looking for topical stories of the day, there’s no reason why the site would even be this balanced.

Whereas a mix of a respected news source, such as the BBC, CNN, or whatever flavour news you fancy, combined with the UGC predeliction for the oddball stories you’d have emailed your friends in the old days, would have the best of both worlds.

I realise that some of these issues are perhaps wandering away from the original ‘famous for 15 people’ concept, but I really do feel that user needs are intertwined so much with new media that it’s hard to separate the issue into bie-sized chunks without missing the big picture.

And while I’d welcome comments from a small number of eloquent, intelligent regular readers, I can’t see a day when, as a writer, I wouldn’t want my work to be read by the widest possible audience.